U.S. wants Gitmo prisoners held at home (Agencies) Updated: 2005-06-10 09:12

The United States would rather have detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison
camp imprisoned by their home countries, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
said Thursday.

Rumsfeld spoke a day after saying he was unaware of anyone in the Bush
administration discussing closing the prison in Cuba. Hours later, US President
Bush refused to rule out shutting the facility, saying his administration was
"exploring all alternatives" for detaining the prisoners.

Human rights groups and former detainees say prisoners at Guantanamo have
been mistreated. The Pentagon said last week that some U.S. personnel there
mishandled prisoners' copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld holds a
news conference at a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance
headquarters in Brussels June 9, 2005.
[Reuters]

U.S. officials are waiting until Iraqi and Afghan authorities have the
ability to deal with dangerous prisoners before handing over detainees from
those nations, Rumsfeld said Thursday at a news conference during a NATO defense
ministers' meeting.

"Our desire is not to have these people. ... Our goal is to have them in the
hands of the countries of origin, for the most part," Rumsfeld said.

The defense secretary said interrogators had gained valuable information from
Guantanamo prisoners which had saved lives by helping authorities thwart
attacks.

The prison holds about 540 men accused of terrorism, most of them alleged
members of al-Qaida or the former Taliban government in Afghanistan that
supported Osama bin Laden's terror network.

Former President Carter this week added his voice to those of critics who say
Guantanamo should be closed. Amnesty International has called the facility "the
gulag of our time," a characterization that both Bush and Rumsfeld dismissed.

A file photo, dated January 11, 2002, shows
detainees sitting in a holding area watched by military police at Camp
X-Ray inside Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during their processing into
the temporary detention
facility.[Reuters/file]

Last week's Pentagon disclosure of mishandling of the Quran followed a report
in Newsweek, later retracted, that U.S. investigators had confirmed that a guard
had flushed a prisoner's Quran in a toilet. The White House blamed that report
for violent protests in Muslim nations.

In Brussels on Thursday, Rumsfeld praised NATO's missions in Iraq and
Afghanistan, calling them proof of the alliance's value and saying NATO must
continue to adapt its military forces for similar missions in the future.

Plans call for NATO to open a training school in September for Iraqi military
officers. The alliance hopes to train 1,000 new officers each year at the school
near Baghdad.

Rumsfeld was returning to Washington Thursday night, a day earlier than
planned, in part to prepare for the visit of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun
to the White House on Friday.

In Afghanistan, NATO plans to expand its International Security Assistance
Force ahead of parliamentary and municipal elections scheduled for Sept. 18.

Alliance officials say they are hoping to add about 3,000 troops to the 8,300
NATO forces already in Afghanistan.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer said alliance members should
"avoid excessive optimism" about Afghanistan because recent violence has shown
how fragile security is there.

Before leaving Brussels, Rumsfeld was posing for a photograph with Russian
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov when the Russian jokingly asked him where his
Kalashnikov rifle was.

"I must have given it to Venezuela," Rumsfeld replied. The United States has
objected to Russia's agreement to sell 100,000 of the assault rifles to
Venezuela, with whom U.S. relations have been cool.